The media January 2017

Faking it and making it

On the tricky definition of “fake news.”

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The post-election period has been rich in ironies, mostly at the expense of the media who remain blind to them through their inveterate self-righteousness. First and most spectacularly, perhaps, there was the outcry against Donald Trump’s asseveration, before November 8, that the election was “rigged” against him. The suggestion that Mrs. Clinton’s approaching victory—which at the time appeared to be a sure thing—would be illegitimate was universally denounced in the media as a crime against democracy. Then, after the shocking result, they turned on a dime and started claiming that Mr. Trump’s victory had itself been illegitimate, for any number of reasons—either on account of “voter suppression” or of his supposed “$2 billion worth of free media” or of the announcement by James Comey in the election’s final ten days of an

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